The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End

by Neil Howe

plausible dates for the end of the Millennial Crisis. The early 2030s (best guess 2033) represents our estimate of the resolution of the Crisis era—with the climax occurring several years earlier (perhaps in 2030). These dates are roughly consistent with the timetable suggested by the “world system” and “long cycle” theories we examined earlier. Thompson, in his extensive 2020 examination of the global long cycle, concludes that the current “United States global system” is likely to enter its closing “global war” phase in 2030. Joshua Goldstein, another much-published scholar of long cycles, would put the highest likelihood of great-power war “in the late 2020s.” These are close to the crisis climax target dates forecasted by the earliest global-system theorists back in the 1980s: 2025 or 2030. In other words, the target dates haven’t shifted much.